Time-out: Commenting etiquette

When I first started this blog, I had to make a decision: Should I be moderating the comments?

I decided to put it at the most minimal level, thus allowing anyone who wishes to comment to be able to do so.

This system worked quite well during the SFUO General elections. I only deleted one comment throughout the day regarding an attack on a random student I had interviewed. Most of the other posts were intelligent, respectful and fair.

I am not sure why this has changed over the past day or so. Many personal attacks are flying, and I have had to delete a few comments in the last hour alone. I am establishing rules and I hope that visitors to this blog will respect them.

Anonymous posters: I will certainly be stricter with anonymous posters. It is your right to remain anonymous and I encourage you to choose a nickname and stick with it until the end of the campaign, but if you do choose to remain anonymous, your comments will be scrutinized much more than other comments.

PIDSSA: Like most students, I am aware PIDSSA had problems this year. That does not mean I am particularly interested in hearing current and past executives argue about those problems here.

Relevance: Please keep your comments relevant to the the initial post.

Censorship: I will certainly not "censor" anyone. I will remove direct attacks, gratuitous attacks, hurtful comments, etc, towards individuals. I do not mind getting attacked and I will tolerate much more when it is concerning myself than if it is directed toward other students. There is simply no need to have such comments on this blog. That does not mean you can not criticize. On the contrary. Please do. If anything, that is the objective of the blog.

In case of abuse: Please do not hesitate to call, text or email me to remove a comment. I can easily blog from my wPhone, but it is more difficult to remove comments from it. I do not always have the chance to read all the comments, and I can easily miss some.

Moderation: As it stands now, anyone can post anything. I hope to keep it that way, but if there continues to be abuses, I will simply have to start filtering the comments.

UPDATE, ELECTION DAY 2:50AM: I am already saturated by the immature, unintelligent and partisan comments I am getting on this blog. Especially from "anonymous". For this reason, I have changed the settings to the comments section. My apologies to those wishing to remain as anonymous as possible. If you do wish to comment but are unwilling to create a Google account, you can email me at sfuo@wassim.ca and I will add your comment to the post.

Photo courtesy of Jason Chiu. The SFUO Blog™ exclusive.